The Five Steps to Berthold Hawkeye's Insanity
by IvyShort
Summary: Those five times his little girl uttered those three tiny words would echo in his mind, each time making him slip another layer into the dark insanity that had plagued his mind since the day that his wife had died. Oneshot. No pairings.


**And I present to you-**

**The Five Steps to Berthold Hawkeye's Insanity**

**That poor man. **

Riza was six when her mother died. She crouched beside the charred remains of what was once a beautiful, kind woman who loved her husband and her daughter with her entire heart and sobbed as if she could cry enough tears to bring her mother back from the dead. Riza's father crouched next to her, his eyes wide with shock and terror, realization barely dawning on him that his wife had been killed.

By her own husband, the man she cherished so much. By him.

"Elizabeth…" He murmured, sadness echoing off the walls as his daughter's sobs quieted, replaced by choked hiccups and loud sniffles.

"You killed Mom." Her voice was low, deadly, murderous- everything his cheerful Riza was not. "You killed Mom! YOU KILLED HER WITH THAT STUPID FLAME ALCHEMY!" Berthold cringed under the raw fury of his daughter. "I HATE YOU!"

With that, she rushed from the room, slamming the door and leaving her father to mourn his wife alone.

_That was the first step. _

"You are not going to learn alchemy, Riza." She was eight now, and no longer so cheerful or carefree. Her eyes always shone with grim determination- Berthold knew that if she was given the chance, she would perform human transmutation. Part of Berthold desperately wanted to assist her and bring back the wife that he was responsible for killing.

The other part of him knew it would never-could never- work, and that Elizabeth would kill him with her ghostly hands if she knew he was considering it.

"But I want to!" Riza protested, her eyes glistening with tears.

"All it does is destroy whatever you hold dear, Riza. It was my research that killed your mother."

"It was the government's, and you know it!"

"I carried it out, Riza! It is as much my fault as the government's!" He barked gruffly, making his daughter shrink back. Berthold saw his daughter blink away the traitorous tears that threatened to spill over.

"I HATE YOU!"

_The second step._

"Why are you breaking your promise to Mom? You promised her no apprentices! You promised!" She was ten now, and her amber eyes were hard and unforgiving, too old for her years.

"We have to eat, Riza." He said simply, opening his newspaper.

"It wouldn't be a problem if you hadn't turned in your resignation as a state alchemist!"

"I couldn't very well continue it after what happened to your mother!" He argued.

"Mom wouldn't have wanted this to happen." She said, voice full of venom, daring him to say more.

"I know, Riza, but I have no choice." He sighed. Her eyes, now practiced in hiding emotions, gave nothing away- not a single tear.

"I hate you." She muttered.

_The third nearly snapped him in two._

Two years, twelve failed apprentices later. Berthold had a sneaking suspicion Riza was behind their almost immediate departures.

"I'm not letting you chase them away. Roy is here to stay."

"Not if I can help it."

"Riza!" He warned, his voice as low and gruff as his twelve year old's.

"Who cares? I hate him, and I hate you!"

_The fourth made its ugly appearance._

Two more years, and Riza seemed to have reconsidered. Roy was still there, and Berthold was blessed (as much as a cursed being like himself could be blessed) with a happier household than Berthold had been accustomed to in eight years. There was no problems with pepper in tea, or venomous glares as his apprentice and daughter passed each other in the hallway.

Riza was actually distracting his apprentice. Everything Roy said somehow linked back to Riza

_I bet Riza would like this, Sensei._

_D'you think I could go out a little early today, Sensei? Riza was going to go to town today, and I wanted to help her._

_Sensei, why don't you eat with me and Riza tonight?_

So much so that Roy wasn't even there for alchemy anymore. Riza was his focus, and that was all Roy cared about. Nothing more than a typical teenage boy, he was. Roy, his protégé, was losing sight of his goals and dreams. For Riza. For the daughter who hated him.

"Riza." He broke the silence between his daughter and himself with a gruff bark.

"Yes, father?" She asked, stirring her stew unappetizingly.

"You are spending far too much time with Roy these days. He is here to learn alchemy, not entertain you." Berthold watched his daughter set down her spoon and saw her look up with ice in her glare.

"He can't do both?"

"Not if one interferes with the other, Riza. Roy is here first and foremost to learn alchemy."

"You're trying to steal my best friend away from me! Is your entire life now devoted to making me miserable?" Her hand curled around the spoon again, her arm thrusting it into the stew again, making a soft _plop. _She was near her breaking point, that Berthold knew well. The next time she thrust the spoon, it could be aimed at his head.

"Best friend? I thought you hated him."

"I reconsidered." She said simply. If her eyes had been daggers, he would be long dead. If the venom in her voice was poison, he would have long since joined his wife. Eight years, it had now been. Eight years of poisoned words. In those eight years, his little baby girl had grown into an independent young woman. Berthold had nothing at all to do with that, except giving Riza a roof over her head. He had long since given up the desperate clinging to what was once a family, contenting himself (if it could, as dull and lonely as it was, be called contenting) with the very alchemy that had killed his wife.

"I want you to focus on your own studies, Riza. You need a good education to get anywhere in this world." The dreaded words she spoke next were low, quiet, soft, but Berthold hear every syllable dragged out long after her mouth had finished speaking.

"I hate you."

_The fifth came as a summer storm- looming on the horizon and suddenly striking. It shattered Berthold Hawkeye's heart, already cracked in four places, into the tiniest shards, like when a fragile glass vase was smashed on the floor._

_For the next three years until his death, the five times his little girl uttered those three tiny words would echo in his mind, each time making him slip another layer into the dark insanity that had plagued his mind since the day that his wife had died._

_I hate you._

_Berthold Hawkeye had only ever wanted to be revered, respected, hailed as a hero…_

_Loved._

**Review please!**


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